


Spark Me Up

by blarfkey



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Erik, Erik Has Feelings, First Time, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Touch-Starved Charles, guilty charles, major angst, solitary confinement will wreck your shit, touch-starved Erik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 04:22:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4691939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blarfkey/pseuds/blarfkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is Erik raw. This is Erik lost. This is Erik looking at Charles like he is the only piece of wreckage in a vast ocean. The only star in the sky.  </p><p>And such a look does things to Charles." </p><p> </p><p>After ten years, they are both starving for each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spark Me Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Red](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red/gifts).
  * Inspired by [In Solitude](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1801906) by [Red](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red/pseuds/Red). 



> Give me touch  
> Cause I've been missing it  
> I'm dreaming of strangers  
> Kissing me in the night  
> Just so I can  
> Feel something  
> ~ "Touch" by Daughter

Ten years have made Erik a stranger. He looks heartbreakingly familiar, with his Roman nose and self-righteous rage, but he doesn’t act familiar. Something is off.

He  won’t stop _staring,_ for example. His gaze bears down on Charles like a physical weight, tracking him unrelentingly every time Charles runs a shaky hand through his hair or rubs his leg absently. He feels raw and exposed under Erik’s scrutiny and it sets his teeth on edge. The man’s presence itself is enough to spark all the pain Charles tried valiantly to bury. He doesn’t need this added pressure of Erik’s stare focusing on him like a laser.

It reminds him too much of Before, of long nights and longer car rides of easy conversation, where Erik’s attention felt warm and exhilarating.

Secondly, the body language is all wrong. Erik is a stubbornly self-contained man. It took weeks of casual touch to keep him from flinching or stiffening whenever Charles clapped him on the shoulder. Now he smiles when Charles punches him, leans into Charles’ tight fisted grip of his shirt as he screams at him, brushes their knees together as they play chess. His body curls towards Charles like a flower to the sun.

 Their roles are reversed now – Erik bestowing touches that Charles shrinks away from.

If Charles didn’t know better, it would almost seem flirtatious . But he does know better. 

Erik has never been interested in sex. With anyone. Not only would Erik’s massive trust issues never allow himself to be so vulnerable with another person, he just never developed a sexual interest in any gender or lack thereof.

 Charles had run into his kind before, people attentive and recipient of his flirty banter and charm, but who never took more than a glass of wine before going home. Erik gets more stimulation from a round of chess than he ever would a blow job.

 It’s enough to make Charles wish for his telepathy back, if only to know what is making Erik act so strange.

 

In Paris Charles makes sure that everyone gets their own rooms, even if it means putting everyone on separate floors. Hank has had to baby Charles quite enough as it is, he doesn’t know Logan, and rooming with Erik again in a cruel mockery of their road trip days is too painful to even consider.

Charles can’t sleep. Instead he paces in front of the windows, the lights of the city twinkling beyond. His nerves are utterly shot from today’s rollercoaster of wild events. How could he sleep when a man from the future tells him of an impending genocide caused by his estranged sister and preventing it involved breaking his former best friend out of prison?

It sounds unreal to Charles and multiple times he wonders if Logan is just insane and thoroughly invested in a delusion.

And yet he knew things about Charles that no one else does. Well, no one else but Erik and he was in no position to spill secrets about Charles’ childhood.

Which means that the impending devastation is all too real and yet Charles feels removed from it. All he can think about is recuperating his own personal loss: Raven.

 (And maybe, just maybe, Erik. If there’s anything left of Erik to salvage).

 

Somewhere close to midnight someone knocks softly on his door. It must be Hank and Charles flushes guilty at the thought. The young man must be as afraid as Charles and yet he has not offered his friend any sort of comfort or reassurance. The last decade has turned him into a selfish bastard, yeah?

But when he swings the door open, it’s not Hank who stands there.

“Erik? It’s . . .late.”

The man peers around Charles’ shoulder.

“Your room is bigger than mine,” he comments.

“The rooms were chosen at random,” Charles replies. “And yours is on the next floor up, if you’re lost.”

“I’m not lost.” Erik takes a step into the room and Charles presses his hand solidly against Erik’s chest and pushes the man back into the hallway.

“Excuse you? Just where exactly do you think you’re going?”

But Erik doesn’t reply. He stares down at Charles’ hand, his heartbeat pounding like waves breaking against the cliffs. Slowly he reaches up and brushes his fingertips against the line of Charles’ jaw. His hand is cool and dry and it trembles ever so slightly.

“Erik?” Charles breathes, his own treacherous heart thudding in his ears.

Something snaps. Erik crowds Charles into the room, pushing him up against the far wall. His hands wrap around Charles like clinging ivy, and he presses his face into Charles’ neck, his breathing harsh against the shell of Charles’ ear.

Charles finds himself as stone, afraid to move, afraid to even breathe. This is so unlike Erik that Charles wonders if he’s hallucinating or dreaming. He waits for Erik to snap out of it.

 But he doesn’t move.

“Erik?” Charles breathes after a long moment. “What are you doing?”

“Touch me,” whispers Erik, voice ragged.

_What?_

 “You don’t . . .you don’t like to be touched. Not like this.”

Erik sucks in a shuddering breath. “I need to feel something. I need to know that someone other than myself is real.”

“Erik, I don’t know if I – ”

“ _Please_ Charles.”

Never in a million years would Charles expect to hear these words come from Erik’s mouth. Eleven years ago he dreamed of it, yearned to feel Erik cling to him like this, knowing that it would never happen and he would never ask.  Even now, with such a desperate invitation, Charles cradles the back of Erik’s head with hesitant fingers.

Erik’s entire body shudders the moment he touches him.

“Please,” Erik whispers again.

What could make Erik hungry for something he’s never wanted before? Is this a trick? A manipulation?

No. The look in Erik’s eyes is a man starving.  And the only way someone goes hungry is through the utter denial of food.

Solitary confinement.

Charles pushes back Erik’s fringe and rubs his thumb across the crease in his forehead. The best way to feed a starving man is one small bite at a time.

Charles swallows thickly. “Lay down on the bed.”

Erik keeps a death grip on Charles’ arm as he leads the two of them to the mattress. He sits down, looking beseechingly up at Charles and the breath catches in his throat.

He has _never_ seen Erik so vulnerable, not even when Erik moved the satellite, not even when Erik begged him to stay together on that beach. Never. This is Erik raw. This is Erik lost. This is Erik looking at Charles like he is the only piece of wreckage in a vast ocean. The only star in the sky. 

And such a look _does things_ to Charles.

Oh, this is stupid, but he is gone already.

“Lay down,” he says roughly and swallows again. “On the pillows.”

Erik scoots back up the bed and lays flat as a stone. Charles circles to the other side of the bed and crawls on top of the covers until only a scant couple of inches separate their eyes.

“Come here.”

Erik needs no other invitation. His hands burrow under Charles’ shirt, mapping out every square inch of him. His fingers leave trails of fire that Charles tries to ignore, but still he gasps when Erik’s blunt nails scrape down his back.

 To distract himself, and perhaps Erik too, Charles begins his own exploration. He traces the contours of Erik’s face, combs his fingers through Erik’s hair, massages his scalp with his own bitten nails. He unbuttons Erik’s shirt and draws paths down his neck, over his collar bone, palms the subtle curve of his absurdly tiny waist. He soothes where Erik provokes, is soft where Erik is sharp, until eventually Erik stills his hands, burrows his face in the crook of Charles’ neck, and gives himself up to Charles’ attentions.

“Is this okay?” Charles asks.

Erik nods. 

“How is this okay? I don’t understand.” Charles pulls his hand away. “I _know_ you don’t care for this kind of thing.”

With a frustrated groan, Erik plucks Charles’ hand and places it back on his cheek.

“That was before I went ten years without any it.”

“I thought you would appreciate not having to deal with lesser beings.”

The lame joke falls flat in the resulting silence.

 “It was a nightmare,” Erik hisses, letting out a rattled breath. “I loathed every second of it.”

The vehemence of those words startles Charles.

He had just assumed Erik was guilty; he never confirmed it. And Erik suffered ten years of isolation because of that. Now Charles is glad he doesn’t have his telepathy -- he doesn’t want to see the damage his own temper has wrought on a mind that used to be so bright.

 _I’m sorry_ , he wants to say, but the words lodge in his throat, sticky and bitter, utterly powerless in the face of what they’ve done to each other.

“Charles, I know what I am asking for,” Erik murmurs, the wide pad of thumb brushing against Charles’ lower lip.

And then he kisses Charles.

The effect on Charles is immediate, a hit with thunderbolt. He gasps, surges into Erik, molding their chests together.  Erik wraps his arms around Charles’ middle, pulls him even closer, but his lips press softly, hesitantly. Oh God, has he never done this before? Is Charles his first? The thought sets his blood on fire. He buries his fingers in the soft auburn of Erik’s hair and slots their lips together.

It feels wrong to take advantage of this stark and rare vulnerability, but he is also hungry for Erik after eleven years of starving. He wants to mark and touch and taste every inch of him, wants to devour him piece by piece. He catalogs every sensation, comparing it to how he used to imagine it.

 _This_ is the smooth plane of Erik’s back, _this_ is the rough pull of his lips, _this_ is how Erik’s calloused fingers feel on his skin, _this_ is how Erik tastes, this is how Erik groans, deep and low, when Charles sucks on his bottom lip _._ It’s better than Charles imagined, more exhilarating than any high, and he can’t believe that Erik is giving him this.

The man’s hands are everywhere, skating over every rib, mapping out the lines of Charles’s shoulder blades. They dig into his hips, leaving every nerve on fire in their wake. His lips press kisses down the trail of Charles’ jaw, down the column of his throat, teeth scraping sensitive flesh in their desperation. Charles can’t think, can’t _breathe_ , catching air in gasps and moans that Erik swallows.

And then Erik’s hand firmly and quite deliberately presses against Charles’ erection and everything stops.

“Erik?” Charles gasps.  His forehead presses against Erik’s and he fights to catch his breath. “What are you – you don’t –you don’t have to –“

 It’s hard to speak because Erik keeps palming him roughly through his jeans but he can’t allow Erik to go this far because of his touch-starved weakness. And yet Erik won’t stop.

“ _Erik_ ,” he whines, hips rocking uncontrollably into the other man’s hand, because this is uncommonly cruel.

“Shhh, Charles.” Erik presses a soft kiss against the shell of Charles’ ear and chuckles wryly at the moan it causes. “I know I don’t have to. Let me do this for you.”

“Erik – I can’t – I”

“Shhh.” Erik silences him by sucking on Charles’ lower lip the exact way he had done to Erik moments earlier.

The button on Charles’ fly comes undone and the zipper pulls down by invisible fingers. Erik slips his hand into Charles’ underwear and squeezes his fingers around his length, his thumb pressing against the head and dragging a startled breath out of Charles.

“Am I hurting you?” Erik asks.

“No,” Charles gasps.

“Good.”

Erik returns his lips to the column of Charles’ neck, sending gooseflesh racing down his arm, as he begins to move his hand. The rough drag of those calloused fingers wrenches an embarrassing moan from Charles, sends him scrabbling for purchase in the wrinkled folds of Erik’s unbuttoned shirt. It isn’t perfect – it’s dry, the rhythm jerky, the grip too hard sometimes.

But oh God it’s perfect.

More than perfect, because Charles knows what it means that Erik is doing this. Guilt hovers at the edge of his mind, but it is almost entirely engulfed by his growing ecstasy of just being _touched_ , of being cared for (being loved, his mind chimes in but Charles blocks it). Tears prick at the edges of his eyes. Charles buries his face in the crook of Erik’s neck to hide them and to muffle his desperate gasps as he thrusts helplessly against Erik’s firm grip. But Erik’s other hand finds him, cradles the side of his face with fingers so long and palms so wide it makes Charles _throb_. A wide thumb discovers the dampness at the corner of his eye and wipes it gently away.

“Oh Charles,” Erik breathes.

He kisses the damp crow’s feet by Charles’ eye.

Charles comes all over Erik’s hand, his chest, the edges of his shirt. All the breathless tension disappears and he sags against Erik like a cut string.

Though he would love to get his hands and mouth on every inch of Erik, Charles doesn’t offer to return the favor. If Erik wanted something, he would probably demand it, just as he waltzed into this room and demanded _this._ But Erik stays silent, carding his fingers aimlessly through Charles’ hair and he waits for him to catch his breath.

Charles lies there frozen, afraid to even breathe. He can’t quite believe this isn’t a fantasy of his own mind. It wouldn’t be the first time his subconscious taunted him with hyper-realistic, lucid dreams of everything he’s ever ached for, only for reality to hit him with a cold, hard slap in the morning.

_I need to know that someone other than myself is real._

He clothes his eyes and looks for details to anchor him: the faint smell of the mansion clinging to Erik’s borrowed clothes, the distant beat of Erik’s heart against his ear. He traces his fingers in nonsensical patterns along Erik’s chest, relishing in the heat of the man’s skin.

He feels more tangible right now than he has in years.

 “You should probably clean up before it dries,” Charles says, reluctantly extracting himself from the embrace.

Erik nods and heads to the bathroom. The spray of the shower head drifts into the bedroom through the cracked door. Charles cleans himself up with a few tissues and changes into a different pair of sweat pants before sitting up, rubbing his eyes, waves of shame and contempt washing over him.

How quickly the support of ten years’ worth of fury had given Charles in less than twenty four hours with Erik. How easily it is to offer himself up after such a sound rejection. Is he never going to get over this man?

(Will he ever want to?)

Who was he kidding? If he had given up Erik like he should have, he wouldn’t feel this much.

 

Erik reappears, hair damp and shirtless. Charles expects him to leave, immediately, too embarrassed of his own weakness to stand another second in the presence of its witness. Instead Erik hovers by the bed like an apparition.

“You can stay here,” Charles finds himself saying. “For the night. If you want.”

To his shock, Erik nods and climbs into bed. He doesn’t return them to their earlier embrace, but he tangles their legs together. A tangible reminder, one that both of them need.

Exhaustion settles around Charles like a heavy blanket, but he fights to keep sleep at bay. So many words want to claw their way out into the open, secrets eager after hiding for too long.

_I love you. I miss you. Come back. Stay._

But Charles swallows them back down. He can’t give Erik all of his vulnerabilities in one night. Instead he feels greedy and asks for more of Erik’s.

“Are you scared? Of what Logan told us?”

 “ . . .Are you?”

“I don’t know,” Charles admits. “It doesn’t feel real to me yet.”

Erik knocks their feet together and doesn’t answer for a long moment.

“I’m afraid.”

It comes out the barest whisper, so soft Charles wonders if he wasn’t supposed to hear it. It nestles like a splinter in his heart. Of course Erik is afraid. While Charles knows the potential horrors of the future genocide in the abstract, Erik knows its reality in horrifying intimacy.

Charles gropes for Erik’s hand and laces their fingers together. “It won’t happen, Erik. We have each other now. We’ll face this together and stop it from ever happening.”

“You mean stop it from happening again.” Erik’s grips tightens. “It already happened once.”

Charles wisely doesn’t argue with that. Instead he rests their tangled fingers over Erik’s heart and hopes that’s comfort enough. Sleep is blurring the edges of his consciousness and he starts to drift away.

He feels empty, but in a good way. Empty like someone had burned the dust and cobwebs and empty bottles from his mind and left him clean and bare for something new. Something that feels like hope. Hope is dangerous. It’s glass and Erik is a hammer. And yet Charles embraces it even as he chastises himself for doing so.

He has Erik back. And tomorrow he’ll have Raven back. Then his life will finally feel _right_ , like a crooked picture frame readjusted. For once, Charles looks forward to the day ahead.

“I’ll save us,” says Erik, as if Charles is the one needing comfort.

“We’ll save each other,” Charles mumbles.

“I’ll always let you try.”

Sleep claims him utterly before he can respond.

 

 

 

 

The next day, as Erik points to gun at Raven, Charles has to remind himself:

Hope is glass and Erik is a hammer. It shatters every time.

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, thank you Red for such an awesome collection of fic to choose from. It was really hard! I chose "In Solitude" because I loved the concept and decided to give it a sort of maybe happy ending if we pretend that Erik didn't colossally fuck it all up the next day.
> 
> Secondly, this is my first ever written porn. Ever. I popped my smut cherry on this fic, so please. Be gentle. Wink Wonk.


End file.
